Day 20: Someone Forgot to Publish This After They Wrote it

So, as the title suggests, I may (Or may not, but most likely may) have finished typing this and then forgot to publish or post it to Facebook cause i was super sleepy. Oh well, whats life without a little uncertainty? (Predictable, thats what it is. predictable)

Today was thrilling, well actually, no, no it wasn't. Not for the most part. I didn't run this morning, I saved it for this evening. I spent the full day at work, same old, same old. Some planning of my exciting long awaited return home.

(I warn you, I am going to be annoyingly secretive in this next sentence)

My day then picked up a bit after school and I headed to pick up a gift for someone special, something that I got made, it is brilliant, and beautiful and now I just wish Christmas would hurry up and come so i can give it to the person if is for. (See, lots of words but no real substance, you know nothing!)

Mystery box, mystery box, how exciting

If you wanna know the secret, check back after christmas day.

Following my collection I came home and grabbed some food from the supermarket.

I have a question for you. It's Christmas, your friend comes over, you hand them a present you got them, maybe a bottle of wine or.... a bottle of some alcohol that isn't wine (As adults we know that a bottle of something alcoholic rarely goes down badly as a present). It's your turn, you have quite a large box. You are excited, you know it can't just be a boring bottle of wine, "people who give wine as presents are the worst" you think to yourself. You unwrap it and this is what you see:

At least it is in a nice box, I think you get a lid too!

"What's that?" you ask. That is 15 cans of tuna, 5 varieties, 3 cans of each, all made by the same company. How would you feel about that?

What about if it was this?

Ohhh, different colour lids! But let's be honest, the gold lids are the best

How's that? 6 different types of instant coffee, is that better?

The can top, second from the right really upsets me!

There we go, that hit the spot, 27 cans of fruit juice. None of these items are particularly specialised, they are all items you could pick up from from the supermarket yourself if you so wished. Now, I don't want to insult any part of Japanese culture, but I find these as gifts rather unusual.

Being totally honest if someone bought me a present I could have easily picked up myself on my weekly shop I would feel a bit put out. I think many westerners would be (And you would make a note to ensure you bought that person some toilet cleaner or cans of beans next year. 2 can play at this game!). And this is something I have noticed about Japanese present culture. It is much more modest than in the west.

This links to what I have said before about the price of fruit in Japan. Fruit is a common gift, I have seen grapes, mangos and apples all packaged as gifts. It is not just food either, I had a teacher tell me once that the present she got from her son for her birthday was a mechanical pencil, that was it (I am not knocking mechanical pencils, they are the kings of pencils, as long as you have enough lead that is).

Something that flies in the face of my modest gift thing however is melons, yes thats right melons. This is how much I am used to paying for a galia melon, £2/$3/¥300. However, I have seen melons in Japan costing as much as £300/$500/¥50,000. There is something about the pattern on it's skin that Japan just loves and if the pattern is just right they are willing to pay unbelievable amounts of money for it.

All this being said, if i received this, I would be very happy:

For those who don't know, this is beer! Delicious, delicious beer

After the supermarket I went home, marinated some chicken and went on a run. As my leg was still hurting I ran slower than I wanted to, but I still ran 6km instead of 5km, I had extra energy that wasn't being used up.

Something I have noticed is that even though I was running at a slow, I have hurt my leg pace I was running at about the same speed, if not a little faster than when I started all this.

After, I cooked the chicken. Soon I will soon be off to bed, it is much later than I intended to stay up to, especially as I have to get up for a morning run and I always find running in the morning after 2 days not running in the morning hard.

I didn't want to leave you with not ever seeing my chicken meal, I know that would just eat you up inside. Get it? Eat you up

Day 19: I Would Have Made a Terrible Danial-San

Right so, here I am, doing my 5km walk as it is my rest day, just like my first Wednesday I thought I would kill 2 birds with 1 stone. Then after that, I will walk and write my blog.

Not really in the mood for walking, don't want to run though, so I am in a pickle aren't I? But after all, part of the reason I decided to do this blog after the ramen adventure was to ensure I had a reason not to be a lazy arse. So walk I shall. 

This morning I got my lie in. It was great. Well, actually I barely noticed it, that's the problem with sleep eh? You know you appreciate the extra time but at the moment you are having it there is no appreciation or even awareness.

Anyway, standard day of school, nothing much to report, then off to the gym.

I went a little early today and still came out at the same time, I was rather tired and the dead lift is proving difficult to get used to, it's a movement I am not used to. 

Despite the book suggesting I try to add weight every workout I decided that I wouldn't because of my injury, so I just squatted the same weight and then ensured I worked harder on the other things.

Now I hurt!

Ok, not the best looking meal, but the meat is on the bottom, remember that

Then I had dinner, the rest of the sirloin from on Monday with pumpkin and sweet potato mash with some French mustard. おいしいでした。(o-I-shi-I de-shi-ta, oishii deahita) meaning it was very delicious! 

After I stuffed my face (yes like a hamster does) I had karate, I didn't want to go, and felt my injury was a legitimate excuse but as I only have 2 classes left before the 3 week hiatus of home, I felt I had to go. 

This resulted in some rather comical kicks. "Low kick" I kick low, "middle kick" I kick low, "high kick" I kick low. You get the idea. I was even asked if I was ok, I tried explaining, not sure if I explained it right but the Sensei smiled and nodded.

Not sure if you can tell but I was super hot and sweaty after. No I am not in a dressing gown.

I am coming to the end of my walk and it is lovely, kinda. I just want to go to bed, let my body heal and my mind rest but when I'm not looking at my phone it is very pretty. Not a cloud in the sky. I tried taking a picture with my phone but it turns out iPhone cameras were not meant for star gazing

I modified one of these to be a little more starry, it's so subtle I bet you cant work out which one it is

Nearly home, tomorrow is just running, no other working out. Normally I like to get it out of the way and give myself the evening, but tomorrow I will rest more in the hopes of healing and also I can have no time pressure if I run after school.  Here's hoping this heals up soon or how will I prepare my body for the inevitable gluttony and laziness of being home for 3 weeks? 

Day 18: It's cold and it Hurts

I have been bitching a lot about the cold, I do know that, but it is bloody cold to be out in shorts, a t-shirt and under armour (the sportswear, not something to go under my chain-mail. Unrelated; chain-mail is always overlooked in a zombocolypse, it would always stop a bite). I don't know the exact temperature, my iPhone app said 7°C but judging by the ice all around I would say it was colder. This is what the morning looked like out on my balcony. 

Pretty yeah? Pretty Cold!

I got dressed, headed out and away I went. Same old, same old. I listened to the audiobook (That is probably why I talked about the zombocolypse up there), and managed to focus on it while I ran. I have realised that in the mornings my first kilometre is alway fast, I guess because I want to warm up, but it was a little painful. 

You can see I have changed my language to Japanese, hope fully it will help. Maybe it will be to little of a gesture

It's painful because I have a slight injury on my right leg, it is on the inside of my upper leg, might be called the adductor. I think it must be a strain, it caused me a fair amount of pain when I took longer strides and squat with heavy weights. I will have to take it easy from now on for a few day. I wont stop but I wont strain it either.

I feel a photo of my inner thigh might be appreciated more, but this is more informative

Do you like my diagram? The red stuff is muscle, the area that hurts. I drew both sides as I think that it would have looked rather inappropriate had I just drawn the muscle that hurts. As you can see, running with smaller strides is less painful, and bigger strides with a tiny head is more painful. More jogging than running. There is also the squat, I must keep my weights low and ensure I don't strain the muscle. I know my form isn't good, but take it easy on me, that is more to do with my artistic skills than my actual form. Maybe.

Before my evening class it was time for sushi, once again, same old sushi. Delicious

It can be all too easy to just keep grabbing plate after plate

One thing I love about the sushi restaurants is how easy it is to take stuff home. You just take what you want off the conveyer belt and put it into these plastic containers and away you go. I took a couple of pieces for a post class snack and away I went.

So, off to bed with me. With my flight home a week on friday I only have 11 days, 7 runs and 4 training sessions left till I get to rediscover the delights of the UK. Very excited I am.

Tomorrow is my running rest day, that means I get to stay in bed an extra hour tomorrow morning, YAY.

Day 17: 10, 5, 2.5, 1.25

Not too much trouble getting up for a run today, however I have noticed I am pushing the time I get up back a little each day. Its hard to get out when you know there will be frost on the cars and a bitter wind. This is why I prefer my evening runs, the sun has already warmed everything up and, while still cold ,its not your thumbs hurt for the first 2km cold! But I still did it, with a meh time compared to my evening runs, but still.

Maybe one day I will include a more interesting picture about me running

The audiobook is really good for distracting myself from trying to calculate exactly how long it will be until i can stop. It is also a little creepy. It's a book about the zombocolypse and running early in the morning when few people are about is a little off putting. Well, at least I know I could run away if I did see some zombies...or would I be too tired because I have already ran a lot???? Maybe I need to give this running thing a little more thought.

No classes at school today so I could just catch up on some work, sort out some computer stuff and read the book that I was recommended by a friend about strength training. It's good, very informative, but very heavy on the technical stuff, such a giving lists of exactly all the muscles involved in an action and such. However, it is very informative, detailed and it has pictures! Those are the best kinds of books, ones with pictures.

This is either how to do an exercise or how to stand up as creepily as possible

This is the deadlift, it's what I tried to learn to do today, I say tried because it's not so easy and the book itself says that even regular lifters hate doing this so much they will try to find excuses not to do it that session. It is, however, the lift where you can pick up the most weight, so that is cool. Some people lifting 100's of kilos. Me??? Oh yeah, I'm like totally up there, managed a huge 50kg deadlift!...... Shhhhh, I'm still learning. 

Anyway, something much more exciting happened to me today, something that I have been looking forward to and happens very rarely, this:

Sometimes it's the small things

Yup, thats right, I have all the weights in descending order on my squat. woop woop! I dunno why but I find this really satisfying. What you see here is 10kg, 5kg, 2.5kg and 1.25kg all that on each end plus a 20kg bar adds up to 57.5kg. The next time I will see this is when I add the next biggest weight, 15kg. So I won't be seeing this again until I can squat 87.5kg. It is a long way off but I am already looking forward to it. All the more reason to train hard.

After my gym session I headed home to make dinner and do my dishes (That's right, my weekday nights are crazy!). My dinner was something I have been looking forward to. Meat in Japan can be very expensive, and there usually isn't much variety so I sometimes order from a website called the meat guy. It all arrives frozen so I had this big sirloin steak that I needed to eat before i go home because if my electricity gets cut off because i'm not here to pay it this winter break, I am not going to waste 400g of prime sirloin!

So this was my dinner:

No "witty" caption, just mmmmmmmmmmmm

Lot's of protein to help me grow the muscles needed for those damn deadlifts and get up to 87.5kg. I slightly overcooked it but it was still good and I'm sure it will do the job. I better let this digest, I have my early morning freezing run to look forward to, as the Japanese say がんばります (ganbarimasu) or "I will do my best"! Off to bed!

Day 15 + 16: Making a Mountain out of a Hill

Please forgive my lack of a post yesterday, I had to wake up early this morning to go look at some nature with some of my Japanese friends so I went to bed early. But I think going in chronological order will be better, people seem to prefer chronological order.

Saturday, my friend and I climbed that mountain that I talked about last weekend. As I said last weekend, if you climb it 30 times you can get immortalised with your name up on the wall of the restaurant, that is our goal. 2 down, 28 to go, with 30 weekends left until I leave Japan I will be climbing it most weekends. 

  

I think Mt. Fuji is in the background somewhere, maybe

I realised that I made a slight error last time I talked about this mountain. It was the result of lazy googling. I said that this mountain, Mt. Awagatake, is only 50m shorter than Ben Nveis, the tallest mountain in the UK. This was because I found a Mt. Awagatake which is 1293m tall, however the Mt. Awagatake that I will be climbing is actually only 532m. Just a tiny difference! Well, no, not just a tiny difference, actually in English (according to the UK's definition) my Mt. Awagatake is technically a hill. 

I've got some circling skills!!

Above is the book that you sign every time you reach the top. I will photograph every time, but i doubt you want to see a number increase by 1 every weekend, if you did I'm sure you would just write different numbers on your calendar.

Because of the running, strength training and boxercise on friday I felt that it was best to have saturday as my rest day. So the 5km hike counts as my rest exercise. 

Today-

As I said before, I had to wake up early, before 6am, so that we could go and look at some nature. There is a lot of nature in Japan, but the specific nature we were looking for was the changing of the leaves. Like this:

Ohhhh, look at the pretty colours

These are Japanese maples, I don't really know any more than that, but they are very pretty eh? It took us 2 hours to drive there and then there was a surprise monkey:

You may think he is jumping, but actually he is a flying monkey

To be honest I am not sure how I feel about this, on one hand there is a monkey who is being forced to perform, but on the other hand there was a bloody monkey!

It is still a welcome change to ramen

This was my lunch, not so healthy lunch but it was very delicious, and then I was told about an interesting local delicacy.

Decide now before reading the next paragraph, does this look delicious?

These are hornet larvae, they are in a miso sauce. I tried a few of them, they tasted and had the texture of boiled beans. They are also supposedly meant to give you energy, I was informed it will help with sexual energy too.... I didn't really know what to do with that information. 

I guess it worked (Not the sexual energy) because it happened again, I went for an evening run, and ended up running a 6k again, at a pace of 5mins 18 secs/km. So it would look like it is becoming a pattern. When i go running in the evening I seem to be able to run further/not look forward to the end. Let's see how I do tomorrow with my morning run.